The Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) 1588v2 standard defines the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), which is a packet based two-way message exchange protocol for synchronizing clocks between nodes (e.g., network devices, such as routers, switches, etc.) in a network. A network device may act as a source (e.g., a master clock) or a destination (e.g., slave clock) for PTP messages. Unicast negotiation is a mechanism by which a master device and slave device negotiate transmission rates for PTP messages, such as announce, synchronization, and delay response messages.